There is an abundance of research, for example here, here and here, that point to the idea that reading comprehension and academic achievement can be vastly improved, and socio-economic gaps closed, by consistently increasing the amount of academic knowledge students learn starting from primary school. These theorists also suggest that knowledge builds on knowledge, cumulatively. So the more you read and learn about the world, the more you will be able to grasp. A good summary about the idea of core knowledge and the link to literacy comes from ED Hirsch, who states that:

Nearly all of our most cherished ideals for education – from reading comprehension and problem solving to critical thinking and creativity – rest on a foundation of knowledge.

As a parenthesis, in case you’re interested in a second perspective, see this critique of Hirsch. Some of his ideas can be interpreted as a tad elitist e.g. his books ‘What your child needs to know…’ series can testify to that notion. However, I still agree with his basic premise above.

A Knowledge Curriculum

I am interested in what we can do with a research guided approach to ‘knowledge’ in the classroom, beyond testing. Many may be familiar with Daniel T Willingham’s thinking around knowledge and intelligence. Willingham states:

..knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: It actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more—the rich get richer. In addition, factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes like problem solving and reasoning. The richer the knowledge base, the more smoothly and effectively these cognitive processes—the very ones that teachers target—operate. So, the more knowledge students accumulate, the smarter they become.

Let’s look at a concrete example of how this would work in practice. A weak reader with some background knowledge of the read topic will score higher than a stronger reader with little or no background knowledge of the topic. Why? Because, as Willingham has found, factual knowledge matter improves literacy and critical thinking skills. So with your own background knowledge, consider the word ‘Apple’. What comes to mind, a piece of fruit, Apple Watch or perhaps apple pie? But, your background knowledge goes deeper than that, of course. Let’s take a look at how language is further made complex by the absence or presence of background knowledge by examining the example below:

The hunter said “There’s a grouse across that field maybe 100 yards away.” His friend said, “well, shoot.” The sentence does not mean “fire your gun.”
Background knowledge = shotguns aren’t accurate at 100 yards. A grouse that has flown from cover is gone. “Well, shoot” means “too bad we missed it”. – D.T. Willingham

This is why “in-jokes” are only funny to those with the background knowledge to understand the underlying meanings.

So if we believe that factual knowledge is themedium of understanding, then what’s the problem? The problem for students lie in retaining this knowledge. Unfortunately for us humans, our working memory – the one we use remember and use relevant information while in the middle of an activity e.g. following instruction or remembering a phone number – is very limited. This is an area I have devoted some time to explore, particularly in terms of testing and spacing, but I’ll share my experience on that at a later date. For now, I’d like to share a pedagogical framework I have developed which looks to maximise retention of long-term memory for students; a ‘wrapper’ for a consistent approach to the way we teach – whilst encouraging teacher autonomy and teacher creativity. I have accessed recent research on core knowledge and instruction, all of the sources are listed at the end of this post.

There are five subjects in my faculty: History, Geography, Sociology, Law and Government and Politics. As a result, there’s a real opportunity to align our curricula according to the framework below. Here’s how it works.

Conflict Planning

Our lessons are framed around a ‘hinge’ or key question which students investigate throughout the lesson. These questions provide a sense of meaning to the learned content and, if planned with conflict in mind, may make our lessons more memorable. Hinge questions work for any subject and are ideal for challenging students to think throughout the lesson. The ‘why, why, why, why?’ helps to provide tension in the learned content. However, in order for students to retain the new knowledge in their long-term memory, further tension is needed. If we treat each lesson like a good story with its predictable structure (see previous post on the power of stories in lessons), which focuses on the 4Cs of causality, conflict, character and complications, then this will help to refocus students’ attention on the core meaning of the lesson and therefore more likely for new knowledge to be added to their long-term memory.

Good modelling would ensure that the central meaning of the lesson is maintained by using concrete but subject relevant information.

Activating Prior Knowledge

This is of course a key component in any good lesson plan so that the teacher knows where to pitch the learning. However, activating is more than checking if they remember. When I use the phrase ‘to activate prior knowledge’, I am referring to a moment in the lesson when students use techniques to retrieve knowledge. This means that teachers need to train students ways to remember facts. In order to teach them memory retrieval skills I recommend you read any of the sources from this list:

One simple way to encourage students to practise memory retrieval is to engage them in gamification via tools such as Memrise or Quizlet. The latter is particularly good as tests are quick to set up and students really enjoy taking them due to their competitive structure. The real strength of these types of tools is the opportunity for self-testing, again and again.

Quizlet is a good tool to allow student self-testing.

We are also exploring using Knowledge Vaults with students, particularly with exam groups. This is a document which provides an overview of required knowledge we want students to remember. The Knowledge Vaults differ depending on the subject and Unit but would for example include terminology, quotes (from historians, sociologists or research), key studies and a timelines. Our Knowledge Vaults accompany the testing framework well, as you can imagine, and is an active component in the way we assess mastery.

Cognitive Support through Modelling

To make sure we offload as much of the cognitive load as possible, good teachers provide good quality modelling of tasks or activities e.g. working through examples on the board with the support from students. Some use examples that are relevant to students’ lives and to make the subject matter more enjoyable e.g. when teaching about the October revolution the teacher gets students to create an animation using stop-motion, which the teacher demonstrates how to do. Daniel T. Willingham reasons that “…your memory is not a product of what you want to remember or what you try to remember; it’s a product of what you think about“. According to this argument, student would therefore remember how cool it was to create a stop-motion animation rather than, say, the causes of the revolution. Good modelling would ensure that the central meaning of the lesson is maintained by using concrete but subject relevant information.

Effective scaffolding teases out understanding rather than limiting it; creates opportunity rather than slowing thinking down; challenges students to struggle through their thinking.

Chunking and Supervised Practice

This is an essential part of the lesson. Our working memory is too limited to be able to deal with the vast amount of facts that teachers want students to learn. By splitting the new knowledge into manageable chunks, students are capable of working through each chunk by step without memory overload. After each new part has been looked at, students should practise with guidance from the teacher or peers. This is a crucial part of the lesson so that the new knowledge is not forgotten, or that misconceptions are not remembered. Techniques for supervised practice could include using graphic organisers to do various activities like 100 word summaries, venn diagrams, or by asking pairs to reason through a problem, with another pairs listening in, to gauge how far they have understood.

Supervised practice is key and links directly to the next step:

Deep Questioning, Deep Answers

In ‘Teach like a Champion (chapter 1)‘, a teacher favourite across the globe nowadays, Doug Lemov shows how exceptional questioning can encourage the most stubborn student (or shy) to think hard; think deep. I think this strategy can be further improved by challenging students to support each other to build a deep answer. This is where the whole class actively listens and then provides examples of how to improve the verbal answer e.g. using subject specific terminology, connectives, examples and so on. Whilst this is a worthwhile cognitive activity in its own right, it also allows teachers to check understanding across the class, sort misconceptions and drive learning forward by showing students how to connect their knowledge together – both factual and skill(s).

Scaffold – allow thinking

We had an educational advisor come into our school to review teaching and learning (we are a Free School). One thing she picked up on was how different teachers provide support. The advisor commented that good scaffolding occurred throughout most of the school but there were instances when ‘students [had] no chance to think for themselves’. I’ve worked in several schools over the years and this way of scaffolding is not isolated to only some of our teachers. Because we want to makes sure all students progress, we differentiate and provide challenge where we require. Effective scaffolding teases out understanding rather than limiting it; creates opportunity rather than slowing thinking down; challenges students to struggle through their thinking.

Independent Monitored Practice

At this point in the lesson students know what they are doing and will spend time on their own focusing on completing a set task. Unlike supervised practice, independent practice involves more time for students to think and work without the support from peers. It does not really mean allowing students to ‘get on with it’ for three lessons without supervision. Regular reviews will take place to check understanding. Supervision of independent practice often takes shape as questioning and quick pitstop checks.

Retrieving Memories

By reviewing what students have learned during regular intervals e.g. weekly and monthly, we help them to strengthen their memories further. In fact, retrieval practice goes even further and:

Improves students’ complex thinking and application skills

Improves students’ organization of knowledge

Improves students’ transfer of knowledge to new concepts

So, retrieval doesn’t only help to improve long-term memory, it also increases our understanding. As Barak Rosenshine explains:

Students need extensive and broad reading, and extensive practice in order to develop well-connected networks of ideas (schemas) in their long-term memory. When one’s knowledge on a particular topic is large and well connected, it is easier to learn new information and prior knowledge is more readily available for use. he more one rehearses and reviews information, the stronger these interconnections become. It is also easier to solve new problems when one has a rich, well-connected body of knowledge and strong ties among the connections. One of the goals of education is to help students develop extensive and available background knowledge.

There are numerous ways of encouraging retrieval practice some of which have been mention above in ‘Activating Prior Knowledge’. This way of connecting knowledge, exponentially growing one’s understanding, is particularly effective if built into the curriculum for example via tests or an exam strategy that spaces learning across time with several opportunities to practice.

Next post I will explore how we will use the framework for maximum impact.

References and Further Reading

What makes great teaching? Review of the underpinning research by Robert Coe, Cesare Aloisi, Steve Higgins and Lee Elliot Major, Durham University and the Sutton trust, October 2014

I was recently asked to deliver a webinar responding the findings by OEDC on the lack of impact of edTech on learning. The purpose of the webinar was to show an example of how digital technologies can have had a measurable impact on both teaching as well as learning – at a whole school level.

… [we need to] find more effective ways to integrate technology into teaching and learning to provide educators with learning environments that support 21st century pedagogies and provide children with the 21st century skills they need to succeed in tomorrow’s world. – Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, 2015.

Before we can begin to solve that challenge, we must first understand the students we teach and what makes a good, if not excellent learning environment.

What is the perfect learning experience for pupils?

The answer is simple: it’s in the Modern Foreign Languages classroom. But not quite the one you may envisage. This one takes place in in France, where students can enjoy the authentic cuisine, feel the checkered table cloth under their hands, listen to local music, smell newly baked French baguettes. I think you get the picture. Total Immersive learning.

What is students’ experience of learning today? The reality varies, no doubt, yet the majority of students will go from classroom to classroom, sitting, listening – lesson to lesson. How is this learning continued outside of school, at home? They carry on learning but not necessarily linked to our subject but more to do with their friends, clubs, artists, idols, sporting stars etc; they interact and learn via INSTAGRAM, Twitter, online games and so on. They return to school and many feel that their expectations of how to learn are not necessarily met.

So, who are the students we teach?

I mean, what are they about? Increasingly teachers are working with students who have, or are in the process of changing. These students have by the time they enter secondary school:

1. Redefined communication:

Social Media and other digital technologies enable them to access information and interact with each other via SMS, WhatsApp, IM:ing, Facebook, Blogging, Vlogging, Twitter, Vine, Tumblr, Insta. This means they are used to getting instant feedback when sharing photos, messages, stories and other information.

2. Highly social – redefined the concept of ‘friends’

These students engage with online games where 50+ play at the same time; IM:ing each other with people they know and with people they have never met. They have hundreds of friends. These may not be ‘best friends’, as you or I may define them, but nonetheless they share thoughts, concerns, trust their advice and confide in them. Through these experiences they explore identities and CONNECT. The cyber world is a place for them to experiment with their identities and connect, connect, connect.

3. Representing themselves

They blog about their feelings, explore thoughts an opinions about the world around them. They share updates about thoughts on Twitter, Insta, WhatsApp; this is an environment where these youngsters augment friendships and their representations of themselves by posting photos, customising profiles – often daily – declare/update statuses, music/movie preferences and so on.

4. They can collaborate online anytime they like

Education is the last institution to adapt to their different world.

Why are digital technologies so attractive to young people?

Social interaction

Technologies provide a help forum for when they are outside school to swap notes, get ideas for homework, ask questions from their mates and a place or tool to share experiences.

User Generated Content

What do students spend more time on: thinking about what to add to their website in terms of text; what new phrases they can use in their presentation; or the layout, colours, themes, images, videos, titles, or which fonts they will use to make their creations amazing?Safe to say, young people take design very seriously and as part of the creative process we must allow them time to do so. When, is a matter for the teacher to decide… So, content creation is significant, where the outcomes are more important than the process. Facebook and Vine, Insta or Tumblr are all about content creation and sharing content, designing, make videos (Youtube), share photos (Flickr) create t-shirts, stickers. What does this way of learning lead to?

Expectations about immersive experiences…

So, we have students who have evolved into 21th century learners with rough digital skills and often they have accomplished this without much input from schools. There is a place – AN OPPORTUNITY – to educate them about using the tools they are already playing with, accessing, experimenting with nearly every day. And while we’re at it, why not help bring our colleagues into the same century for using digital technology? Bring your colleagues onto the prototyping playground.

We decided to create digital toolkit with a specific, carefully selected number of tools which we could introduce to both students and staff – and ensure they became embedded, and used by all. We aimed to provide a suit of digital technologies that would to ensure students were equipped with technologies that would prepare them for rapidly changing labour market. Skills developed would match current research on ‘Digital Literacies’ and *futureproof* what students need know/be prepared for. We also wanted to equip staff with knowledge and skills which would give them opportunity to improve productivity e.g. lesson planning, resourcing, marking and feedback, monitoring, creativity, to name a few.

We decided to use Google apps for education. The main reasons why we chose to use this suite of tools was because it was free, Microsoft proved not only complicated but also expensive ( at the time of deciding), we had significant expertise in this field, and the features and benefits matched the aims for our school:

Drive: allow us to move away from an old-fashioned system of sharing information. Drive would enable us to have a repository for files, documents, presentations. it would also allow us to share and collaborate online, anytime.

NB. we also had a core group of staff there wanted to explore further digital technologies as we had also decided to promote the use of iPads by teachers in the school ( all teachers have iPads in our school).

How did we do it?

It was a gradual process which involved careful planning and buy-in from SLT. We also made sure that the kit and systems worked before launch.

We also decided to allow for settling time. This coupled with sharing all material via Drive left everyone with no other choice but to start using it. It worked.

What was the impact?

There were initial challenges to get staff moving from a traditional school network to using an online space. We are still working on getting teachers and staff to move away from the teacher planner to using calendar. However, this is not a priority and many staff would want to continue using a paper-based method. The organisation for both staff and students have improved significantly with all our exam groups accessing information and material on Google Drive, email and many teachers make excellent use of Google Classroom. All schemes of learning and resourcing are now stored in the cloud and the sharing of the latter happens seamlessly. We still have a way to go, for example, we would like all students to use calendar so that intervention and support can be organised quickly without any to-ing and fro-ing of emails to check a suitable time. Integrating iPads into whole school teaching is still proving to be a challenge, but we are getting there.

So to revisit Andreas Schleicher’s quote at the start of this article… I think we have managed to get to a good place where learners can continue to grow and where staff can share, collaborate and develop as professionals.

In the last post on differentiation I outlined the struggle I have gone through with differentiation and how oracy – when tackled in a ‘expert’ way (advocated by Ron Berger) – can give students the confidence to communicate and believe that they can do so effectively. In this post I want to explore how we transfer confident talking into confident writing.

We all know that some students struggle to put their ideas down on paper and that it hampers their progress in learning. Also, it affects their ability to enjoy the lessons we teach, because they ultimately know that they will not be able to create an effective end product. At the other end of the spectrum, there are students with great literacy skills who can’t achieve, because they find it hard to deconstruct second order concepts and historical writing. I will tackle these in the next two posts.

Understanding How To WritePlanning for progression in writing requires, in my opinion, a vast amount of preparation. The first stage is to make sure that students have a sufficient knowledge base to draw from. Johannes has recently written a brilliant post on this (see Maximise Retention of Students Long-term Memory Part 1). Students who know ‘how’ knowledge builds up and how to deploy it will be more confident writers. Having looked at the attitudes of reluctant writers from Year 7-11, I am convinced that a secure knowledge base is an essential precursor for confident writing. I will not go into vast amounts of detail about why this is so important here, instead, I will just give three short examples of how knowledge can be built up and constructed throughout the year.

Raiders and Invaders Song to Establish ChronologyThe raiders and invaders of Britain can be sung to the tune of ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.’ Singing it regularly as you go through the units with students helps them to establish a chronology, especially when accompanied by actions:

This process can be strengthened by using a class timeline. At the start of the year I gave Year 7 a 21 event timeline and asked them to decide on the order they thought the events went in. Inevitably there were errors, but we have been correcting these in plenaries as the year has progressed. Asking the question, “So, do you still think our timeline is correct? Do we need to move something?” has enabled students to think carefully about what we have been studying on a regular basis and to review their historical knowledge.

Further to this, quick quizzes that add layers of complexity can also help. For example, start by testing the five groups, then move on to the dates that correspond to their dominance in Britain, next add in key individuals and then put key events in there too.

Planning for Knowledge
This year I have tried to map out the contextual knowledge that students will need to understand a key event and then to include that knowledge at an earlier point in the curriculum, so that students get a chance to experience it and work with it so that it is ready to recall when needed. Christine Counsell has been working on this concept and states understanding requires ‘fingertip knowledge’ and ‘residual knowledge.’ Here is one example of how I have tried to make this work:

I took an epic poem resource from the brilliant Thomas Tallis School Creativity Lab and made it into a historical exercise, by borrowing from texts like Beowulf (download epic_generator Saxons here). I asked students to create an epic poem for homework. Many did a great job and enjoyed the random nature of throwing dice to determine elements of the story. It was a fun way to get them engaged in Saxon culture. After marking the poems I got students to highlight three things in the text: positive characters, negative characters and emotive or revealing words. Below is a sample of the work from an EAL student:

We then went on to analyse what type of story it was and why the Saxons might have told these kind of tales, especially since it did not really fit with the evidence of the Saxons that we encountered in the archaeological evidence). Now that the students were armed with their own epic poems and an understanding of why they were written, they found it easier to comprehend why Harold Godwineson did not follow his brother’s advice ad remain in London when William attacked. This residual knowledge of Saxon epic poems helped them to grasp the choices made in 1066.

This kind of curriculum planning takes time, but it is essential to tie up knowledge so that students find it easier to draw on it and create better answers. Students get ‘blocked’ when they are not confident of the knowledge they need and whatever techniques for writing you teach them will be in vain if they can’t access the knowledge to create their writing.

Word Games
I would like to thank Don Cumming (@jackdisco) for many of the ideas that I have used to strengthen this part of my teaching. His session at Berkhamsted Learning Conference (TLAB 2015) was inspiring. The following example builds on the idea of instilling confidence that I talked about in the previous post of Differentiation (see ). The game ‘Splat’ requires students, in pairs, to race against each other to find a word that goes with a definition that you give. There are lots of ways to involve students: playing, giving their own definitions, suggesting and writing new key words. Activities like this reinforce the core knowledge of each topic.

I hope these three examples give a flavour of the knowledge work that can be done to prepare students for quality writing.

Structuring Writing: Functional Grammar
The remainder of this post is centred around my experiments with Functional Grammar. I am not going to give background into the strategy as Lee Donaghy does it brilliantly on his site ‘What’s language doing here?‘ What I want to add is why I think it is making a difference to many of my students and to share some of the strategies I have been using.

Firstly, to help explain the concept to students I created some props:

These were then used with classes to visually show the different parts of a clause and how they work. Elements of a sentence were written on post-its and students had to identify which elements they thought they belonged to. Having subject vocabulary broken down in this way was useful and scaling up discussion, from individuals, to pairs and then fours meant that students could explore what a participant, process and circumstance looked like. Ensuring that there was at least one example of each type in a four meant that whole sentences could be constructed, deconstructed, explained and then put back together. For example, the sentence…

John Ball preached radical sermons while travelling around East Anglia

can be broken down into…
The ‘Who/What?’ elements (participants) John Ball radical sermons
A ‘The Way Something Happens’ element (process) preached
The ‘Extra/Extra Information’ (circumstances) while travelling around East Anglia

These elements were then sorted and stuck to the relevant prop. Each prop as held by a student and they had to make a mental note of any element they thought was incorrectly placed. This added another layer to the discussion and deepened the understanding of the terms.

Students were then able to practise their writing in groups using A3 grids like these:

Once they were confident, they could tackle their own paragraphs and write a final draft in their books. Use of highlighters to identify the three elements immediately shows if they are using the structure well. Asking students if they can see a ‘Sea of Green’ in their work helped them to focus on the History (and, yes, I did play them a clip from ‘Yellow Submarine’ – 2:00-2:05 mins)
Explicitly teaching Functional Grammar has had a direct impact on the work that students are producing. Sentence structure has improved and, most importantly, their work is more historical. Focusing on the ‘Extra’ information has meant that students are adding key dates and locations to their work in a way that they were not consistently doing before.

Take this example from an SEN student. Before using Functional Grammar to structure written work they were creating paragraphs like:

Edward the Confessor is King. Harold is ship-wrecked. He is rescued by William. Edward dies and Harold makes himself King. William prepares an invasion. He is delayed, but then the wind changes so William lands at Pevensey.

There are some clear issues with this paragraph about the causes of the Battle of Hastings, not least that it lacks historical depth. Also, some sentences are very short and do not deal with the whole subject matter. Now, consider this later piece of work by the same student. It is the final piece of work in the unit and represents several lessons of oracy, Functional Grammar and VCOP input:

Not only is the sentence structure better, but there is more historical depth to the answer. In addition, the student is clearly able to identify which elements are ‘Who/What?’, which are ‘The way something happens’ and which are ‘Extra, Extra Information.’ The reason why I think this matters so much is that it not only improves literacy, but also contributes to creating better History.

Understanding how language can improve their historical writing is really important for students if they are going to progress. Using continuums to ‘fine tune’ the accuracy of their claims has been crucial in getting stdents to create higher level responses. Take the following example:

Students were now able to explore the extent of the similarity or difference and not just that it existed. Students were able to move beyond sentences like, ‘The rebels were similar,’ and create ones like, ‘The peasants and John Ball were fairly similar in their views about freedom, because they both strongly believed in peasants having more rights.’ Linking language to the development of subject writing and explicitly showing students ‘how’ it all works, means we can move away from surface understanding and embed the principles. The impact is then long lasting and allows students to reapply their learning in future situations.

The last level in my Differentiation quest involves deconstructing historical skills and writing still further so that students can begin to understand what it really involves and how they can make it fit together.

It has proven to be the most stubborn and demanding issue I have tackled in my teaching career. I didn’t intend for my quest to fully differentiate a scheme of work to become an epic journey that Ulysses would be proud of, but it has.

Some would say that differentiation is easy. In fact, after deciding to concentrate on differentiation this year I attended a twilight session about differentiation and we were told that the keys to making it work were chunking, colour and images. I produced the following resource at the session:

There is nothing wrong with the resource in itself, but it did not get to the heart of the issue. The question I was still asking myself was ‘What I am differentiating for?’ This chunked and colourful sheet was helping students to access instructions and simplifying the content so that they could find a route into the topic, and although this is an important aspect of teaching, it did not lead to better outcomes. I was differentiating access and not for progress in History. I was still expecting students to somehow achieve the ‘next step’ on their own. Realising this set me off on the right path and enabled me to begin thinking about I could differentiate to help students truly progress in my classroom. To do this I needed to focus on writing in particular and how it was structured.

I don’t think that I am anywhere near a complete understanding, I do ,however, have three observations to share and offer for debate:

1. There is a social and emotional element to achievement in literacy that needs addressing before anything else. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that this is best achieved by addressing oracy first.

2. Any progress in writing has to develop the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what.’ In other words, we need to teach students how writing works and not just what to write if they are to make real progress. Functional Grammar can help with this.

3. Differentiation and progression in writing has to be linked to the specific demands of writing within the subject. literacy on its own will not, for example, make students into better historians. That only happens if we start to unpick what writing looks like within our subject areas.

I will address each of these points in a separated blog post over the coming weeks. Firstly, I would like to address confident talk, why it is so important and the impact it has made on my classroom.

TALKING WITH CONFIDENCE
I have advocated talking as a vital way of preparing for writing for a while now (see this post on the TOWER model), but I wanted to do something more with it.

There is a need, I think, to boost the confidence of students with weak literacy and to demonstrate to them that they can be confident communicators. My hypothesis is that, in the first instance, confident talk would be easier to achieve than confident writing and that achievement in one area would lead to success in others. in other words, allowing students the chance to succeed in oracy would provide them with the confidence to tackle and eventually succeed in literacy.

I returned to my trusty and now battered copy of Ron Berger’s An Ethic of Excellence. In the introduction he says:

I believe that work of excellence is transformational. Once a student sees that he or she is capable of excellence, that student is never quite the same. There is a new self-image, a new notion of possibility. There is an appetite for excellence. After students have had a taste of excellence, they’re never quite satisfied with less; they’re always hungry.

If I could show students that they could become expert talkers then it would be easier to convince them that they could also become expert writers.

I was lucky to discover that Neil Mercer and his team at Cambridge University have been working on an Oracy Assessment Toolkit. This provides clear advice on how to help students peer and self assess their talk and makes a range of excellent resources free on their website. Although they outline several types of talk, I decided to focus, for now, on presentation talk. I set about adapting their framework so that I could use it to model and assess expert presentation skills in the classroom.

For a first run, I chose a Year 7 group that has a number of students with weak literacy. I introduced the idea of expert presenters to them by showing a clip of Hans Rosling giving a superb TED talk about washing machines:

As a class we then unpicked what made it such a skilful presentation. Having set the standard, I then set up an activity that would allow the whole class to demonstrate their skills as communicators. Armed with their criteria checklists and information, they began to create presentations about the Black Death. At this point, the activity was limited to discussing a single source for two minutes and I made sure that the focus was on communication as well as the quality of the historical understanding.

As students were preparing, I moved around the room and offered advice and corrections on the History elements, checking that their analysis and claims were sound. I left the critique of the presentation elements to the rest of the class. When students were rehearsed, we held a public critique, with students giving each other constructive advice on how to improve the quality of their presentations. Students then went away and redrafted and polished their performance before they attempted it for a second time.

Allowing time to rehearse was essential so that all students have the opportunity to commit most of what they want to say to memory. I think that most of the advice on Teacher Talk given by Martin Robinson on his ‘Surreal Anarchy’ blog is just as applicable to students delivering their presentations. The aim is to make it sound and feel professional – giving students the chance to experience quality communication.

The results were better than I had hoped for. Given how unfamiliar speaking in front of the class was for some of these students, I was very encouraged by the quality that presentations, with students creating or bringing in props, using analogy (my favourite was ‘the Black Death was like sinister eagle, ready to swoop down from the sky’) and confidently giving opinions. I repeated the activity with my other Year 7 groups and tried the same technique with Year 9 when they were completing a piece of work about typicality. A similar pattern emerged, with students who had issues with their literacy showing greater levels of engagement, attention to detail and confidence.

The focus on excellence was, as Berger says, transformational. showing students that they can stand toe-to-toe with experts gives them a confidence and self-worth that become infectious.

This were the first attempts at something that will need to be used regularly and part of a sustained programme. However, I was more convinced than ever that a focus of excellence and he power of talking were key to unlocking the potential of students. The next step, of course, was how to transfer this into written work.

COMING SOON…

Differentiation Part Two: How To Improve Writing With A Little ‘Know How…’

I remember watching ‘The Way of the Dragon‘, starring Bruce Lee, when I was a teenager. I was fascinated by his natural ability, the perfection of moves and his sophisticated technique. It took me many years to really understand that anyone could become very good, if not exceptional, at any given skill. The essence of this post is not to share my own thinking around the power of purposeful practice or mastery as a concept, though I might look at those later, but to share my own broader view of assessing how one gets closer to mastery. Continue reading Assessing Mastery: Going SOLO